


Transference

by pantswarrior



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Artists, Arts, Community: areyougame, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 07:46:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pantswarrior/pseuds/pantswarrior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Relm's portraits nowadays have something in common.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transference

Art, like magic, was something Relm had been born with. Anyone could _learn_ to draw and to paint, but she'd never needed to. Before anyone had told her what a brush was used for, she was scratching designs in the dirt, if not defacing the walls and the floors with scribbles drawn with the charred end of a stick. Grandpa sometimes said, only half-joking, that putting a brush in her hand had been a matter of self-defense.

He hadn't known then, of course, that her inborn talents had mingled, making it more true than he would ever have expected.

Having no formal education in the subject, Relm didn't know what she was actually supposed to do with the brush. Having not set up the easel yet, much less the canvas, her grandpa had tried to correct her when she waved the brush through the air, invisibly mirroring the curves of the bowl of fruit he'd set out as a potential first subject. He'd stopped short when a second fruit bowl appeared before her.

...Well, that was the point, she'd asked him - wasn't it? To make a copy. He'd peeled enough of the rind of one fruit to smell the tartness of the pulp within before it vanished.

Magic had its limits, of course. He told her it was always an exchange - you couldn't get something from nothing, but only manipulate what already existed. Relm's "paintings", as real as they seemed for a few moments, would always disappear again.

When her daddy disappeared, she wondered if that was why - because he was magic. Maybe that was why her mommy had disappeared too.

But then, everyone in Thamasa was magic. Did that mean, Relm wondered, that everyone else was going to disappear someday too?

Magic was only a part of what she did, however, and when she wasn't using the magic, she was documenting everything around her with paint or chalk or ink. If everyone else could disappear just like her copies, she wanted to remember them. She used half her first sketchbook drawing pictures of the other villagers going about their daily lives. The other half of the sketchbook's pages were ripped out and burned; she couldn't remember what her mommy and daddy looked like well enough to draw either of them right, and it just made her angry.

Grandpa, not having any idea what to do with a little girl with her passion for art, gave her books about it. She read every one, learning about techniques and about other artists. None of them could do what she did, but they had a lot to say about why _they_ created art, and what art was, and what it wasn't. One famous artist said that a painting offered insight into the soul of the subject _and_ the painter. Relm thought that was just silly - all she was doing was creating a copy of what she saw in front of her.

She hadn't thought about that stupid idea again until a few years later, when she'd followed after her grandpa and wound up in the middle of a big mess with a bunch of grown-ups doing grown-up things. They were always talking about serious things, the Empire and ancient history and boring stuff like that. The only other kid with them was this weird boy who ran around with wild animals and smelled funny. His parents must have been magic too, but it wasn't like they had anything else in common. Relm buried herself in her sketchbooks and ignored him.

But then one day, after they'd fought off a bunch of creepy giant lizards, Gau asked her a question. "Why you always make them fight?"

"Huh?"

"When you draw..." He leapt forward with a hand raised, as if to strike. "Fight fight!"

"Ew, stop it!" she exclaimed, clutching her brush to her chest in alarm. "Anyway, I draw them fighting because they attack us," she told him. "That's all they ever do!"

"Animals do lotsa things," Gau said. "But Relm draw them - fight fight fight! You ever draw something not fight?"

"Well, it's all _I_ ever see them doing," she retorted.

"Then you not watching." Dropping to all fours, he galloped off, leaving her staring after him, puzzled.

It was true. Her grandpa understood animals, and even though Relm didn't understand animals any more than her grandpa understood art, he'd taught her about them. He never backed away from even the ones that everyone knew were dangerous, and most of the time, they didn't hurt him. He said that when an animal attacked, it was because they were hungry, or scared, or hurt. Attacking wasn't really in their nature.

But when she drew animals, they always attacked. People, too. Even her grandpa was afraid of her painting his portrait nowadays, after seeing how plenty of her other portraits had turned out. Even him, after taking her in and raising her and giving her books to explain the things he didn't understand.

Though she had long ago dismissed the idea she'd read in one of them, it returned to her then. The way other people and animals looked - that was obvious. She was just making a copy. As for why they never did anything but fight...

No, that was still stupid. _She_ wasn't some kind of animal. And she wasn't hungry, hurt, or scared. Not at all.


End file.
